22
UWI TODAY 100
TH
ISSUE
– SUNDAY 17 DECEMBER, 2017
BOOKS
Climate Change
This book is the first to investigate
the challenges
of climate change and opportunities for adaptation
and resiliency in coastal cities in the small island
developing states (SIDS) of the Caribbean and
Pacific Regions. It is timely given the catastrophic
hurricanes that devastated Caribbean islands this year.
Highlighting that Caribbean and Pacific coastal cities
are on the frontlines of climate change, the authors
make a call for action to adapt and improve resilience
of cities in coastal zones, especially those experiencing
rapid urbanization. With an estimated 4.2 million
people in the Caribbean and the Pacific living in flood
prone areas due to sea level rise, one in five residents
living in low-elevation coastal zones and human safety,
economic output and employment threatened by
more frequent and devastating hurricanes, the authors
make several policy recommendations, including
increased climate finance to support comprehensive
programmes for strengthening coastal city resiliency.
An array of policy measures including improving
coastal planning, land reclamation, coastal setbacks,
enforcement of building codes, climate-proofing
infrastructure, mangrove reforestation, and coastal
surveying and monitoring are highlighted. The book
provides strategies to implement commitments for
SIDS in international agreements, such as the Small
Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of
Action resolution (Samoa Pathway), COP21, the
Sustainable Development Goals, and Habitat III.
It is a useful resource for urban policymakers and
practitioners, researchers and university students.
It was launched at The UWI St. Augustine on
December 11.
About the Authors
Dr. Michelle Mycoo
is a Senior Lecturer in Urban
and Regional Planning at The UWI St. Augustine.
She has published on climate change adaptation,
disaster risk reduction and coastal zone planning.
She co-authored the book Disaster Risk Reduction
(University ofWisconsin-Madison Press, 2009 andwas
a contributor to the World Bank Report on Climate
Change Adaptation Planning in Latin American and
Caribbean Cities (2011).
Dr. Michael G Donovan
is a Senior Housing and
Urban Development Specialist at the Inter-American
Development Bank where he oversees several of
the IDB’s low-income housing and neighborhood
upgrading projects. He is currently leading research
projects on urban land tenure, adaptation in coastal
cities, and metropolitan governance.
CaribbeanWriters Headline
New Anthology
“It takes a big mind,
or at least a big worldview, to write
from a small space,” says Jamaican writer Marlon James,
winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, in his introduction
to a new anthology available this month.
Collecting original fiction, essays and poems from 17
countries in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Indian
and Pacific Oceans, So Many Islands brings readers stories
about love and protest, about childhood innocence and
the traumas of history, about leaving home and trying to
go home again.
Eight Caribbeanwriters are among the authors featured
in this collection of new writing from Commonwealth
small island states, edited by Trinidadian Nicholas Laughlin
with the assistance of Barbadian Nailah Folami Imoja,
and supported by Commonwealth Writers, the literary
programme of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Peekash Press, based in Trinidad and Tobago, is
publishing the anthology’s Caribbean and North American
edition.
Tracy Assing of Trinidad and Tobago, a member of
the Santa Rosa Carib Community, contributes a memoir-
inflected essay on indigenous heritage and land rights,
while Barbadian Heather Barker considers the slavery
reparations debate through an audacious piece of speculative
short fiction. In Vincentian Cecil Browne’s comic story, a
cricket match becomes a minor drama of personality, while
Jacob Ross is inspired by the history of the 1979 Grenada
Revolution.
The other Caribbean contributors to So Many Islands
are Melanie Schwapp of Jamaica, Tammi Brown-Bannister
of Antigua and Barbuda, Kendel Hippolyte of St Lucia, and
Angela Barry of Bermuda, among writers from islands as
diverse as Fiji, Samoa, Mauritius, Singapore and Cyprus.
“Perhaps what these seventeen pieces have most deeply
in common,” writes editor Nicholas Laughlin, “is an urge
to contend with both the limits and the possibilities of a
small place — whether that means cherishing the intimate
territory of a familiar community, or escaping into a more
expansive realm of the imagination.”
One Health
The EU funded
“One Health, One Caribbean, One Love”
project, implemented byThe UWI and its project partners,
launched “Caribbean Resilience and Prosperity Through
One Health” at the Research Day of the Faculty of Medical
Sciences on November 9.
This book demonstrates how a One Health approach
can help overcomemajor challenges to health and prosperity
in the Caribbean. Many of these problems, like climate
change, food security, ocean health, and emerging diseases
arise from the interactions of people, animals and our shared
environment. One Health is about working together to
improve the health of all species and places. It links people,
capacity and expertise in human health, veterinarymedicine
and environmental health.
An e-version is available at no cost.
Download at
So Many Islands is the fourth book published under
the Peekash Press imprint, which is dedicated to publishing
the work of emerging Caribbean writers living at home in
the region. Begun in 2014 as a partnership between Peepal
Tree Press in the United Kingdom and Akashic Books in
the United States (hence the name), Peekash evolved from
the CaribLit initiative, devised by the Bocas Lit Fest in
partnership with Commonwealth Writers and the British
Council.
In 2017, in keeping with the original intention to bring
Peekash “home” to a physical base in the Caribbean, the
Bocas Lit Fest assumed responsibility for the imprint.
Based in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the Bocas
Lit Fest is a not-for-profit organisation working to develop
and promote Caribbean writers and writing, through an
annual literary festival, a series of prizes, and year-round
programmes and projects aimed at writer and reader
development.
For more information
So Many Islands and Peekash Press
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